To cut a long story short, it was a most dangerous and difficult job to take me off the rocks without upsetting the boat, but it was managed all right by the two men, the older of whom was a very experienced seaman. In less than three minutes after they got me off, the point of rock that I had been on was covered and there was nothing of the island to be seen.
My friend, to whom I shall be ever grateful, declares that he saved my life, and this I think was the fact, for when the wind got up he insisted on the men going back to the island at once, feeling very nervous on my account, and they had a tremendous pull to get back in time as the sea was very rough and the tide was running strongly against them.
[Illustration: WHERE STROME CASTLE LOOKS OVER THE SEA TO SKYE.
The cause of the rocks being covered by the sea--a very rare occurrence--was an unusually high spring tide coupled with a strong gale from the opposite direction, which made the waves much higher than they would otherwise have been in a loch which has the reputation of being one of the most dangerous lochs on the west coast for squalls.
It was the last day of the stalking season in the forest of Fealar, where it had been my good fortune to spend the first ten days of October. I had been out stalking for eight days, during two of which I did not get a shot, but, with the exception of the preceding day, which had been a black Friday for me, I had been very lucky, having shot eight stags, and three of these I had stalked without the aid of a stalker, which had added greatly to my pleasure. But it was a melancholy fact that the last day had arrived, and what had it in store for us? On the preceding day I had had a series of misfortunes, and when I got up and looked out of my bedroom window the prospect was not a cheery one. A thick mist enveloped everything all round the lodge, which is one of the highest, if not the highest, of all the shooting lodges in the Highlands, 1764 ft. above the level of the sea. On coming down to breakfast my host said to me, “Well, I don’t think it is any use going out to-day. What do you say?” But I knew quite well that my host, one of the keenest and best of sportsmen, was only poking fun at me on this the last day of the season. By ten o’clock the mist had slightly lifted. There was a steady drizzle; the high tops were still covered; the wind was east to south-east--the wrong wind for this forest--and the prospect was certainly not inviting. However, we determined to make a start, and I was sent out on the beat of the head stalker, Macdougall. We had not gone more than a mile from the lodge when we saw a shootable stag with some hinds, and after a stalk up a burn and a considerable crawl over a peaty bog, we got to a point within shot of them. Macdougall was just getting the rifle out of its cover when something disturbed the deer, and away they went. Macdougall said he thought I must have shown myself, though I was not conscious of having done so. At any rate, I had succeeded in getting wet through in my efforts to keep flat and out of sight.